Research Interests

Current Research

I am currently working on two book projects. The first, currently titled “Cultures of Circulation, Traditions of Subversion: The Making of the Gulf World in the Americas,” will give substance and weight to the framework of the Gulf World, which I develop in my first book. Here I make the case that If we focus not just on the trade and transportation networks that linked the space between what is now Mexico, Cuba and the United States, but on the movement, migrations and circulations of the diverse travelers who crisscrossed the Gulf of Mexico legally and illegally in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it becomes evident that the the Gulf, while connected to a greater Caribbean and even greater Atlantic and Pacific spheres, became a world unto itself. This book offers readers and scholars a new conceptualization of the region rooted in the case studies of travelers who subverted authority as they laid claim to and shaped the Gulf World through their movements and migrations over three centuries.

The second book project is titled “The Boundaries and the Bonds of Cuban Citizenship During a Time of Transition.” This book is a study of citizenship in Cuba during the first U.S. occupation and the early republic. On one hand, I explore the struggles of migrants stranded abroad after the Cuban independence war who were denied rights and protections that they should have enjoyed as Cuban citizens. On the other hand, I examine the struggles of self- identified Africans in Cuba who resisted membership in the Cuban nation, but were forced to accept Cuban citizenship.

Selected Publications

Books

Cuban Émigrés and Independence in the Nineteenth-Century Gulf World (UNC press (Envisioning Cuba) May 1, 2017).